Nearly three years after President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, his troops are making steady progress on the battlefield.

Iulian Bulai, head of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) group in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), warns, in an interview with RBC-Ukraine, that there is a real possibility that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin could strike a deal behind the backs of both Ukraine and Europe,

That will take some doing. Putin remains uninterested in peace talks as long as Russian troops continue to gain ground in Ukraine’s east, albeit at a slow pace, and while Ukrainian forces hold seized territory in the Kursk region inside Russia, according to John Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and other former officials.